


from the earth to the morgue

by cosmicpoet



Series: shuake week 2019 [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 04:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21030080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: After his death in the engine room, Goro is forced to relive his life alongside Akira as a ghost. He has to watch himself make the same mistakes, shuddering onwards to the inevitable conclusion at the end of it all.





	from the earth to the morgue

Goro can almost forget the burning sensation of the bullet in his chest, if only because he’s been numb to the pain for so long that his body is perhaps giving up easier than it should. He balls his fist against the bulkhead door and lets out a choked sob that _almost _sounds like Akira’s name, but the blood in his throat strangles him into nothingness. All he can do is close his eyes, let the fear and the failure wash over him like slick saltwater over fresh wounds, and let it end.

He coughs into another body, flailing and fighting against life - he decided that he should die in the engine room, and it would only be the mechanisms of a cruel and destructive God to keep him clinging to life against his own will. Slowly, he blinks his eyes open, but there’s only dark, and what exactly can he feel? Hands - he has hands, they clench and unclench and he holds them up to his face, trying to see anything beyond the piercing blackness. And he has breath, or something similar, a rattling wind that courses through his hollow, fledgling-bird bones until he shivers and pulls himself inward, twisting at the way his form feels so unnatural.

Gradually, his eyes adjust to the darkness and he can see what looks like a mirror, and consequently, he can comprehend that he does, in fact, have a body. A strange one, but a body nevertheless. A mess of tangled limbs and dark, thick bloodstains matting his tight suit to his chest, his hair wild and his eyes ringed in such terrifying grey; he’s far from the well put together Detective Prince that he could once have convinced himself was close enough to a genuine persona. But, beyond that, his body is somewhat airy, not quite _real _enough that he occupies a genuine form; he’s semi-translucent, and with this revelation, all of his memories come seeping back through the cracks of what once was a life. Like molten gold, they fill in and harden into the places that he tried to forget, the engine room, the bulkhead door, the oppressive heat and the smell of blood - _god, _the smell of his own blood as he sunk into his own death.

Ah, so he’s dead.

The moment he puts a name to the experience, the room around him bursts into offensive white light, and he manages a bitter laugh - of course he’s not going to _Heaven, _not him - not Goro Akechi, a man of falsity, a liar and a cheat and a not-quite thief.

Suddenly, he’s present in the world again, still occupying some ghostly form, staring right at… himself? Fear breaks thick and fast across his heart, a visceral reaction of freezing in place at the figure in front of him, memories of his cognitive self and that cold, cold gun - perhaps Hell is to relive his death over and over again? He wonders when he’ll become numb.

But this isn’t his cognitive self, he recognises that much, at least, if only because he has to hope that there’s something genuine about him that can’t be replicated by anybody but himself. No, this truly _is _Goro Akechi, he recognises himself in any lifetime, the well-hidden weariness behind his eyes, the perfectly pressed peacoat and gloves and the absolutely disgusting fakery of it all. So he’s in the TV station, he remembers this day well, the first time he met Akira. Hadn’t he said something embarrassing? Ah, yes, trying to make light and friendly conversation about dead philosophers isn’t exactly the most naturally social progression of introduction, but he can’t bring himself to regret asking Akira to talk more.

And then there he is. Akira.

_Akira._

Goro can’t look at him without seeing Joker. He realises now that that isn’t necessarily a bad thing - where Akira has quiet resolve and a soft smile, Joker’s smirk still follows the same high curves; they’re one and the same, and Goro can admit now, in death, with nothing else to lose, that he’s in love with both sides of this rigged, lucky coin.

It’s evident that nobody can see him. He is a ghost, after all, reliving the beginning of his downfall. Sweet temptation overtakes him, and he’s standing next to Akira, holding his hand as best he can without going right through him; it breaks his heart to see Akira shiver a little and pull away, and then Goro is screaming, trying to make some sort of noise, begging for someone - no, not just anyone, _Akira - _to hear him.

But everything fades into dust.

It sticks in his throat every time he’s forced to watch his encounters with Akira. Even the little, unimportant ones - their coffees in Leblanc, their chess matches, the way they’d play billiards and go to jazz bars - ache deep within his chest with the knowledge that he’s an outsider even in his own life. And nothing has changed. He has to watch as this version of Goro bandages himself up after trips to Mementos, as he blackmails the Phantom Thieves, as he courses through Sae’s palace, and there’s _nothing he can do. _No way to tell himself that he’s inevitably going to fail, no way to save himself.

And then he’s back in the engine room. He hears his own voice, pathetic and weak, begging Akira to change Shido’s heart. Maybe this time, things will be different. When this version of Goro dies, will he - the original - be able to press onwards into the future and smile at the realisation that Akira is a man of his word? Will he get the closure that has been pushed so far from him, being forced to relive his firsts and lasts with Akira, never being able to change his fate?

At least, he reasons with himself, he is real. He’s the _real _Goro Akechi, even if he is dead. The man he’s watching now is just an echo, and he’ll die in the way that he’s meant to, but he’ll never be the first. He doesn’t know his fate, but _Goro_ knows - perhaps for the first time in his life, he knows himself, and he’s a desperate child, clinging onto all he has left, the irony of originality.

What will happen when he dies for the second time around?

He watches it from a different angle. The bullet enters, shatters, cracks, and then he’s watching himself fall, just standing there. It’s some sort of self-punishment, a refusal to tear his eyes away from his own broken body, but he has to stand vigilant until this echo of himself dies. 

And then… nothing.

He’s in the dark again, clutching for some semblance of reality. It’s a place he recognises - he woke up here, too, the first time he died. And now there’s another Goro, the second Goro, the echo and the copy and nowhere near the original, realising that he’s a ghost, doomed to live the same repetition that Goro just went through.

And then he looks behind him. To the long, long line of incarnations of himself, weary ghosts dragging their feet along, reliving the same old life for the hundredth time.

Ah. So he was never unique, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Shuake Week! Please comment if you liked :)
> 
> Title from 'Desert Song' by My Chemical Romance (yes I'm reminiscing on my emo phase. leave me alone)


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